Horatio Clare

Travel writer, memoirist and children’s author Horatio Clare was born in London in 1973. He read English at the University of York and later worked as a BBC radio producer on cultural programmes ‘Front Row’, ‘Nightwaves’ and ‘The Verb’. As a freelance journalist he has contributed numerous travel pieces to newspapers and magazines, as well as to ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ on BBC Radio Four.

Running for the Hills (2006), a memoir of his childhood on a sheep farm in West Wales, was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award, and received a Somerset Maugham award. Its autobiographical sequel, Truant: Notes from the Slippery Slope (2007), detailed his descent into and recovery from drug addictions and mental problems. He was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2007.

Having lived in Palermo, he edited the anthology Sicily: Through Writers’ Eyes (2006), collecting works by D.H. Lawrence, Giuseppe de Lampedusa, Norman Lewis and others, with his own lyrical observations on the island’s rich culture and history.

His travel book A Single Swallow (2009) follows the migration of swallows from South Africa to South Wales, recording encounters with people along the way. In 2010 he won the Foreign Press Association Award for his feature ‘Rock of Ages – Ethiopian Highlands’. His novella The Prince’s Pen (2011) is a contemporary re-working of the tale of ‘Lludd and Lefellys’ from the Mabinogion.

He was awarded the 2015 Stanford Dolman Book of the Year for Down to the Sea in Ships (2014), an account of two voyages on container ships. His first book for children, Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot, published in 2015, was shortlisted for the Branford Boase Award. While continuing to travel the world, he divides his time between London, Wales and West Yorkshire.